Entry 490: Welcome to Miami

Getting ready to head out of town.  Early tomorrow morning, we embark on a road trip to Miami, F-L-A.  We are taking our talents to South Beach.  Actually the bulk of the trip will be spent at a retirement community in Tampa (and on the road), but that doesn't sound nearly as exciting.

[This song is so old it can legally drink -- crazy.  Also, an Eva Mendes appearance in the video, before she got big, and way before she collaborated again with Will Smith in the all-time classic "Hitch."  (You forgot that movie even existed, huh?)]

This will be my first trip to S's parents' new place.  It should be good -- relaxing, hopefully.  I'm not too excited about the drive.  We have to break it up into two days, each way, so we're spend four days on the road.  We strongly considered flying, but flying is so expensive this time of the year.  Also, it comes with its own annoyances -- getting to and from the airport, dealing with delays, not having schedule flexibility, not having (or needing to rent) a car in Florida, being limited in what luggage we can bring, etc.  With kids these annoyances are exacerbated, especially dealing with car seats.  I hate car seats, so much.  I mean, it's good that they keep kids safe(r), but they are such a pain when it comes to traveling.  I can't wait until we are done with them.  Although, the way laws are now, you need a booster seat until you're, like, 175 pounds or 25-years-old.  You'd think car companies would invent some sort of standard, adjustable, built-in seat-harness that would work for kids and adults, but they haven't for some reason -- maybe they're in cahoots with Big Car Seat.

Actually, why don't cars have that?  Why aren't the backseats of cars built specifically for kids, considering that's who mostly rides in them?  Then, if an adult needs to sit in the back, you can pop out the standard kid seat and put it in the trunk or something.  Doesn't that make infinitely more sense?  Or better yet, the seat could be adjusted for adults or kids the same way the driver's seat can be adjusted for different sized drivers.  Imagine being able to take a Lyft or ride in a friend's car knowing that your kids will always fit.  What a Utopian thought!

Anyway...

In my last post I said I would give my ranked list of Democratic candidates.  But, then I said I might not because I might not feel like doing it this week, and that indeed is the case.  Well, actually, it's more that I don't the time than I don't want to.  There's so much to do, and I need to do it, in part because it needs to be done, in part to keep the peace.  S can sometimes get, let's say, particular about trips like this.  Basically, she wants to do everything her way, but she also wants me to do a lot of it.  This wouldn't be a problem if I was a mind reader, but sadly I am not.*  This used to cause a lot of squabbles, but I think we're getting better at handling it.  For my part, I just do things my way, and then at least they're done.  For her part, I think she's getting better at not sweating the small stuff.  There's a big out-of-sight-out-of-mind component to this too.  Like, if she's away on business then she doesn't really bother about the kids, because she knows I can handle them.  But, if she's at home watching the kids eat, then she gets all stressed if one of them doesn't finish his milk or something like that.  So, if I just do things and say "don't worry, I took care of it" then things typically go more smoothly.

Well, that's my take on it, anyway.  If you asked S, she might have a totally different opinion on the matter.  But, as I frequently say, I'm the one with the blog, not her, so you necessarily get my point of view.

Until next time...

*Back in, like, 2005 I did online dating, and one of the profile questions was, "If you were a superhero, what superpower would you want to have?"  I put "mind-reading," thinking it was a somewhat interesting, outside-the-box answer.  But, then, like, 75% of the profiles I viewed said the same thing.  It makes sense; in dating the ability to read minds would be very helpful.  Although, thinking about it now, it's a pretty creepy answer.  Mind-reading is a total invasion of privacy.  I wouldn't pick that as my superpower today out of respect for everybody else.  (I might pick to have the brain processing power of a supercomputer.  That'd be pretty cool.)

Also, I'm not sure how helpful it would be to read people's thoughts.  Would you be able to make sense of it or would it come out as a dreamlike stream of consciousness?  And it certainly wouldn't be fair to judge people on their thoughts.  I think some terrible thoughts; everybody thinks some terrible thoughts .  We literally can't help it.  We have no control over what horrendous things pop into our heads at a given moment.  What makes us who we are is how we act (or don't) on these terrible thoughts.  And that we do have control over... I think.

Entry 489: Realpolitik

I figured I'd talk about politics in this post, in part because politics is less annoying right now than my day-to-day life.  My youngest son is wearing me out.  Nothing serious, but he's going through a tough stretch at the moment, for some reason, and he's been a struggle to deal with.  I'd rather watch the impeachment proceedings on endless loop than listen to him whine again.  To make things worse, S is out of the country for work, so it's all on me.  She gets back tonight, and it will be none to soon.

Wednesday was particularly bad.  It was an hour-long temper tantrum before bed.  That's the worst time too, because it prevents him from getting a full night's sleep, which is what he needs most.  He was really tired yesterday morning.  I wanted to let him sleep and take him to school late, but that doesn't work, because I have to take his brother to school on-time, and so he'd have to get up and go with me anyway.  Also, he had a field trip that he would've missed.  That's actually a good thing -- the field trip -- because it's about a 45-minute round-trip bus ride, and kids his age often doze off during bus rides.  He was much easier to deal with last night, so I'm thinking he might have caught some Z's.

He's an odd kid, not in a bad way, but sometimes in an exacerbating way.  He's super particular about the most random things.  It's like he has a mild OCD-ish condition.  I've never known a kid so fastidious.  When he puts his jacket on, he gets really upset if the sleeves of his shirt roll up at all; his socks have to be perfectly lined up on his foot -- seams at his toes, tread on the bottom, pushed down on his ankles; his bed has to be made to his precise specifications before he'll sleep in it -- all blankets smoothed out perfectly across the four corners; and he's always grousing about his pants being too tight or his shoes being too hard or his milk being too hot or too cold or something else that's not exactly to his liking.  Sometimes he gets really upset about it too.  That's how most of his tantrums begin -- something trivial isn't perfect, and it snowballs from there.  I do my best to nip it in the bud, but once the wheels come off, it's nearly impossible to get them back on.  At some point, I just throw up my arms and let him cry about it, because I literally don't know what else to do.  Sorry, kid, nothing in life is ever exactly the way you want it to be.  Go ahead and cry if it makes you feel better, but it's not solving anything.

Which is actually a good segue into politics, because I'm hearing a lot of liberal complaints about the slate of Democratic candidates, and my feeling is: Don't pull that shit in this election.  When people ask me if I'm for Biden or Sanders or Warren or somebody else, my answer is "yes."  Every candidate has flaws, some of them big flaws -- Biden is a past-his-prime gaffe-prone white guy; Sanders is way to the left economically of the median Democratic voter; same with Warren; Booker doesn't excite people; Buttigieg is too inexperienced and privileged; Klobuchar is the female version of Booker; Steyer and Bloomberg are super rich dudes trying to buy their way in; etc., etc., down the long (but rapidly shortening) line.  Fine.  But, we gotta roll with what we got, and we need everybody on board, begrudgingly or otherwise, with whomever comes out on top.  Because it's either them or Trump, period.  Worst case scenario isn't John McCain or Mitt Romney -- that flank of the GOP is dead (in McCain's case, literally, RIP) -- it's a whole new, meaner, more vicious animal.

And, look, maybe everybody will get on board in the end.  It could be people are just fired up now in the primary season, and once a candidate actually emerges, "anybody but Trump" will carry the day.  I hope so, but I'm a little worried -- not full-fledged freaking out (what's the point?), but a bit on edge.

With all that said, I do have candidates I like more than others, of course.  My previous list has totally disintegrated, being that my top candidate is not even in the race anymore.  I'm not going to make a whole new list, but I'll give you the abridged version.  It's based almost exclusively one criterion: most likely to carry the swing states needed to win the Electoral College.  Admittedly, this is not a very good criterion, because it's almost totally unknowable.  We have little idea what will motivate the electorate in the tiny slivers of swing areas to turn out on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next year.  All we can do is guess, and my best guess, based on the elections -- special, midterm, gubernatorial, etc. -- since 2016, is that we need somebody moderate in demeanor, who will push a slightly left-of-center agenda on economics (expanded Obamacare, infrastructure, stronger unions, higher minimum wage), immigration (expanded legal immigration, humane treatment of all immigrants, reasonable border security), guns (anti the insanity we live with now), climate (less fossil fuels, more renewables), and the military (strong defense, not too hawkish), while being pretty liberal on social issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice.  Oh, and also somebody who is totally charismatic and will inspire tons of different types of people to vote for them -- basically another Barack Obama.

But, there is nobody like that among the Democratic candidates.  So, again, we have to make due with what we got.  As Dan Savage likes to say about love, and it works for politics too: There is no 1, but, there are a lot of .65s that we can round up.  To that end, based on my criterion above, I give my top-five candidates below.  First, however, I want to emphasize that this is not a list of the candidates whose policies I most like.  That list would look totally different.  One of biggest fallacies people make in politics is assuming the positions they hold are also the ones that would be the most politically advantageous to adopt (Mike Pesca once called it MSNBC-itis).   I'm trying not to make that mistake.  The counterargument, however, is that nobody knows what's politically advantageous, so you might as well do what you think is right, and work to make that the popular position.  I understand that, and it could be correct.  I even espouse that philosophy at times.  So, I could be approaching this in the totally wrong way.  We likely will never know, at least not until it's too late.  That's the problem with predicting the future.

Anyway, my list...

Actually, I have to go.  Something just came up.  If I get a chance, I'll finish this post later this weekend.  That's unlikely, however, because we have a pretty packed weekend.  Instead, this will probably sit until next week -- the world's worst cliffhanger.  And that's assuming I even feel like writing about this then.  I might post about a totally different topic.  That's the luxury of having a blog with a readership in the low double digits.

Until next time...

Entry 488: When We Was Fab

I've been thinking about deleting my Facebook account for years.  I'm the person this Onion article is making fun of.  I can't stand Facebook's corporate philosophy and their bullshit "free speech" stance on misinformation, and every time Mark Zuckerberg opens his mouth, I cringe that somehow this fool is one of the most influential people in the world.  He's probably number one on my dumb-smart people list -- my list of people who have amazing mental abilities in one narrowly defined area and couldn't be less impressive intellectually outside this specific milieu.  (Actually, Zuck can't be #1; I just remembered Ben Carson exists.)

However, I never actually push the delete button on Facebook, because there are parts of it that I really like and that directly benefit my life.  It's an easy way to keep up with people you care about, with whom you might otherwise lose touch (and that's a lot of people!).  And even for people with whom you would keep up otherwise, Facebook is a decent supplement.  I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews and other close family members and friends I otherwise wouldn't see.  For somebody who lives thousands of miles from so many of his love ones, that's important.

Then, there are just practical things Facebook is good for.  My Krav Maga gym has a Facebook page, and I use it all the time to keep abreast of class announcements and things of that nature.  As I mentioned before, the old building exploded, and so things were really up in the air for a few months schedule-wise (they still are, but at least we have a new permanent location), and that Facebook page was a great resource for staying in the loop.

Finally, there's the nostalgia factor, and I'm a nostalgic guy.  I love thinking back on people I knew and things I did in the past.  And it doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get contacted by somebody on Facebook, and I'll be like OMG!  I haven't thought about this person in forever!  How do they even remember me?!  (Of course, I remember them, because I remember pretty much everybody.  It takes some prompting now, but it's still there!)  This happened to me twice in the past few months and both times it brought me a little bit of joy.

The first was with a guy who was on my rec baseball team as a teenager.  I played on a team with a bunch of kids from a different school, and I felt like I never really fit in.  A lot of them were city kids, whereas I was a suburb kid, so they had a bit of an edge to them, a front, that I just didn't have.  There was one kid in particular who I thought really didn't like me.  He never did anything explicit to make me think this; I just got a dickish vibe from him -- too cool for school.  I was only on the team for a few seasons, and, like I said, I didn't go to school with my teammates, so I never really saw any of them again.

So, imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from this dude on Facebook.  I accepted it (I don't hold grudges and I'm down to be friends with whomever), and I checked out his page, and he seems like a cool, down-to-earth dude now.  It's got me rethinking things.  I mean, maybe he really was a dick back in the day, but he's since matured and change -- or maybe, and this is the more likely scenario, I had it wrong all along.  Maybe he always was a decent guy, and I just never picked up on it.  Sometimes you get a bad first impression, and it becomes a self-actualizing loop.  You think somebody is a dick, so you don't engage with them, and then since they don't engaged with you, you think they're a dick.  There have been numerous times when people have told me that when they first met me they thought I was aloof or super serious, which couldn't be further from the truth.  But, then I was thinking the same thing about them, and that ended up being equally wrong.

Another thing I try to keep in mind is that you never know what type of shit people, especially young people, are going through behind the scenes.  If somebody is standoffish or cold toward you, it could be a manifestation of their own shit and actually have little to do with you.

Anyway, the other person who contacted me is this guy M I went to grade school with.  We didn't really know each other that well, he was a grade below me, but we were in the "challenge program" together, and we were both out-of-district because of it, so we rode the same bus home, and it was a long bus ride.  I think they only had one bus for the out-of-district kids, so it meandered all throughout the city.  As a result, I ended up hanging out with everybody on the bus.  It was a make-shirt nerd crew (and I was the de facto leader).

I remember M well -- he was hard to forget.  He had a big Afro; he wore glasses with an elastic band on them; he was supremely intelligent (the smart kid among the smart kids)*; and he had a serious potty mouth -- even by ten-year-old boy standards.  I saw his profile picture on Facebook one time -- a friend of a friend -- and I was going to send him a friend request, but then I didn't, fearing that he wouldn't have positive memories of me, if he remembered me at all.  He got bullied a lot, and I have this weird recurring thought with kids I grew up with who were bullied a lot that I was one of the people doing it, and I don't remember it.  It's totally irrational, as not only do I not remember being a bully, nobody's ever told me I was one.  I don't know where it comes from.  But, whatever the case, I didn't friend request M.

*He was a perennial contender in the school spelling bee, and I remember one year some friends and I made picks of who we thought would go the furthest, and he was my pick.  He went out super early on MARTYR, and I was so annoyed because I knew nobody else in the competition knew it had an irregular ending, but he just got the unlucky draw.

This was probably a few years ago, and then earlier this week, M mentioned me in a comment about our old challenge class, and a different Facebook friend tagged me in it, and I was pretty surprised by it.  So, this time I did friend request him, and he accepted it, and then he messaged me some random memories from the bus, and I returned with some of my own, and it's been a really nice little interaction.  And there's no way it would have happened without something like Facebook.

Anyway, it's late, and I feel like this post has been more rambling than usual, so I'll wrap it.  But I'll leave you with George Harrison's "When We Was Fab."  According to M, this song came on the bus radio once, and I went on a funny rant trying to break it down and analyze what the hell it was about.  (I obviously hadn't discovered the Beatles yet and probably didn't even know what "fab" meant.)  I have absolutely zero recognition of this, but I do remember the song -- and it immediately transports me to that time in my life.

Until next time...

[In the song he says "long time ago when we was fab."  The Beatles broke up in 1969 and the song came out in 1987.  So, his "long time ago" wouldn't even push us out of the 2000s today.  Nothing fucks with my head more than time.] 

Entry 487: Thanksgiving Break, 2019

It's the last day of Thanksgiving Break, 2019, and it was a mostly successful break.  Everybody got sick at some point, but nothing serious.  There is a case of the sniffles going around.  I've been kinda snotty and sore-throat-y since Tuesday, but it hasn't been enough to knock me out of commission.  It's a slow burn illness.  I worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday, so I haven't been in the office in a week.  The kids didn't have school on Wednesday and S is between jobs (she starts a new one tomorrow), so it's been a full house the past week.

We did our best to stay busy and keep the kids involved with activities -- you know, idle hands and whatnot.  If they're left to their own devices, it's a countdown until they start fighting.  Lil' S1 is old enough now to know how to push his younger brother's buttons, and Lil' S2 isn't old enough yet to know how to ignore it.  Sometimes they have some funny arguments though, such as the following:

Big: Do you know where your Dog Man book is?

Little: It's at Ava and Thatha's.  I lost it.

Big: You didn't lose it if it's at Ava and Thatha's, because you know where it is.

Little: No.

Big: Yes!  How can you lose something if you know where it is?  I left Pokemon cards at Ava and Thatha's so that I can play with them next time we go there.  I didn't lose them, but you would say I lost them.

Little: No.

Big: Yes!  The way you say it, I would have lost them but I didn't!  But that's how you say it.

Little: No!  I didn't say that!  You're making me sound worser!  You can't do that!  That's not fair!

If I had to pick a winner, I'd give this round to Little Brother -- "You're making me sound worser!" was a nice rebuttal, the four-year-old equivalent of "don't put words in my mouth."  He just needs to learn to keep his composure, but I think that's literally impossibly for a kid his age.

Anyway, Thanksgiving day was quite nice.  We hosted what ended up being a pretty big dinner -- 11 adults and six kids.  I made deviled eggs and cranberry sauce, both of which I love making because they are both so easy and yet so delicious.  For the eggs, I mix the yolks with mayonnaise and yellow mustard and sprinkle on paprika -- that's it.  For the cranberry sauce, I mix the berries with (way too much) sugar and OJ and boil it until the berries pop and then let everything congeal -- that's it.  So simple, but always such a hit. 

I also was in charge of the turkey, which was also really easy because we bought it precooked from Whole Foods.  All I had to do was pop it in the oven for an hour and a half to reheat it.  I didn't have to worry about meat thermometers or overcooking or, worse, undercooking it and giving everybody salmonella.  Again, easy-peasy.

I completely gorged myself, naturally, and I've been hitting up the leftovers all weekend.  I "invented" a new sandwich.  It's a grilled cheese with turkey inside, but the bread is coated with mayonnaise instead of butter (try it, seriously), and then once it's done, you open it up and put on some cold cranberry sauce and dill pickle slices.  Absolutely divine.  Friday night, I had two of those suckers, and a massive slice of cherry pie with whipped cream, as an after dinner "snack."  I mean, what's the point of doing strenuous workouts on a regular basis if not to eat like a glutton every once in a while?

[Originally Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty McFly in "Back to the Future", but the director Robert Zemeckis didn't think he was right, comedically, so he put Michael J. Fox in and basically reshot the entire film.  Pretty crazy.  Spike Jonze did that with Scarlett Johansson in "Her" (originally the part was performed by Samantha Morton), but that was just a voice, not a live action part.  Good move by Zemeckis (and Jonze, probably).  I think Stoltz is too emo for Marty McFly.]  

Yesterday we went to the Natural History Museum (technically, the National Museum of Natural History, but I've literally never heard anybody call it that) with another couple and their two kids.  It was a good way to spend an afternoon, even though I've seen almost everything in that museum a dozen times.  (It's the museum I've been to the most in DC, by a large margin.)  There was a new dinosaur fossil exhibit, but the kids, surprisingly, weren't that into it.  My kids really liked the Insect Zoo, where they can hold cockroaches and pet walking sticks, and our friends' kids liked the gemstones.  And of course all the kids liked the Doritos at the museum cafe.

Apart from the museum, it's just nice to go out sometimes and be among the people, especially on a crisp, clear late November day.  It feels so quaint and yuletide.  We took the Metro, which is good for about ten minutes.  After that, the kids get restless and start climbing over the seats and wrestling each other in the aisles and whatnot.  It's fine when the train is nearly empty, but that's usually not the case.

Last night, after the museum, S went over to a friend's house, so the boys and I watched a movie.  Lil' S1 is at the age where he can appreciate actually good films and not just that cartoon crap.  (Lil' S2 is only good for about 15 minutes either way.)  So, I can pick out decent stuff to watch with him.  I thought about Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark last night, but S said it was too violent, so I went with Back to the Future instead.  Lil' S2 loved it, as did I when I was his age.  He mostly understood it too, although I had to provide a running commentary to fill in the gaps.  He's eager to watch part two, but I think I'm going hold off as long as possible on that one.  It's just not as good and not as suitable for kids.  Although, he might like it if only for the hoverboard scenes.

Alright, I'm out.  Until next time...

Entry 486: School Stuff

With S out of town for the week on work, I've been doing all the parenting myself, which means I've had to pay closer attention to some of the school stuff S usually handles.  I'm reasonably informed about what's happening in my kids' school lives.  I drop them off every morning, so I know all the people who work at the school, and I know a lot of the other kids and parents in their classes. I go to half the parent-teacher conferences, because S and I usually split them up evenly.  And I get bombarded with automated text messages and emails telling me the latest classroom news -- some of them I even read.  But, I just want the big picture.  I feel like I don't need (nor do I want) the details about specific assignments and projects and such.  My view on that is that's on the student.  It should be structure in a way such that they can manage things on their own with minimal parental involvement.  I think it's better for the student that way, and I know it's better for the parent that way.

S agrees with me on this in theory, but in practice, once one of the kids starts to struggle, her Mama Bear instincts take over, and she feels compelled to help them.  Then we have an argument, because I feel pretty strongly that learning to overcome struggles will be far more valuable to our kids in the long run than will getting a 3 instead of 2 in social studies our the next report card.  It got to the point to where S said, "Do you want our kid to be held back in second grade?" which if you know DC public schools, is extremely unlikely to happen, and if it does (but it won't), then maybe it is for the best.  Because both our kids were born in August, they're just as close in age to the children in the grades one below them than they are to the kids in their own grades.  I think this matters, at least a little bit.  At some point, it won't, but for now it does.  Development is still month-to-month at their ages.

But, since marriage is a compromise and all that.  I've been trying to not be so militant about my no-help policy.  This especially comes into play when S is away and filled with anxiety (and maybe some guilt) about not being with her kids.  She was especially worried about this big project Lil' S1 had due -- he had to research numerical facts and then present them on a poster board with pictures -- so I assured her I would work on it with him.  It went fine.  The only things I did were Google and print pictures of things he told me he wanted (he doesn't know how to do that, and I don't want him using my computer to try to learn) and trace some of his letters in marker, because it would have taken him all day to do it by himself.  This seemed reasonable.  It came out decently.  He said the presentation went well, and the only comment he relayed from his teacher was that he got a point taken off because he didn't write his name on it.  Then he tried to blame me for it, which is a perfect example of when helping is counterproductive -- he should feel full ownership of his work, good or bad.

The other thing I've had to work on him with is his spelling.  Apparently, they have weekly spelling tests, and he's been scoring in the 0%-10% range.  His teacher mentioned it to me one time during drop-off, and I agreed to help him, and then I said that I didn't even know he had spelling tests.  The moment it came out of my mouth I realized, it was one of those things you say in your own defense, but it actually makes you sound worse.  She gave me a look of astonishment (not in a good way), and then said, "I post them on Rallyhood every week."  I smiled, shrugged, and assured her that he would do better in the future.  See, I learned from my previous mistake.  I didn't tell her that I still hadn't created a Rallyhood account and was only vaguely familiar with its existence.

So, we did some spelling words.  He's a dreadful speller, which is somewhat strange, because he's a pretty strong reader for his age.  I'm not super concerned that he become a crack speller.  I would guess my spelling skills are well above that of the average adult, and it doesn't really help me much in life.  I know many intelligent people (e.g., my wife), who aren't great spellers.  It's not that important a skill, considering we communicate mostly through devices that literally spell for us.  But, what studying spelling words can do, I think, is train him to focus his mind on something that he doesn't particularly love.  That is a very important life skill.  No matter what school we attend, or what job we hold, there are always parts we don't like, and being able to do those parts efficiently, nevertheless, I suspect, is crucial to our success and satisfaction in those endeavors.

Plus, I've long felt that rote memorization gets a bad rap as a learning technique.  Everybody is always about "the concepts," which is great, but in my experience the concepts are often facilitated by the memorization.  All the basic math formulas I learned in pre-college -- Pythagorean theorem, quadratic formula, limit definition of a derivative, etc. --  I memorized and used without having a deep conceptual understanding.  And then later, with more experience, I gained this understanding, in large part because I already knew (through memorization) what they were and where to use them.  The what and where led to the how and why.  I still remember looking over a friend's algebra homework as a freshman in college, and seeing how they completed the square, and having an epiphany: That's how the quadratic formula is derived!  If I didn't know the quadratic formula by heart and hadn't memorized the step-by-step process of completing the square, would I have made this connection?  I doubt it.

Anyway, back to Lil' S1, we spent a long time on his spelling words, and he only learned five of the ten words on his list, and I'm not convinced he will retain even those when his test comes around.  But, I think we made some progress.  He did much better toward the end.  We all have our memorization techniques, and I think Lil' S1 was starting to figure his out.  I feel confident that we can get his scores up in the 80%-100% range before too long.

One thing that helped a lot was motivating him through "extra" iPad time.  I use quotes because I just adjust the baseline, so that it's actually just normal iPad time.  He usually watches 15-20 minutes at night, and so I told him he could have five minutes plus an additional two minutes for each of five words he could spell correctly without looking at the sheet.  So, he took a few minutes to study, and then I administered the "test," and after not being able to memorize any of the words for the previous 45 minutes and complaining about it constantly ("Daddy!  I don't know how to learn things!"), he magically got every single one correct.  I was happily surprised.  I guess that's the power of the carrot -- figuratively speaking, of course.  If I offered my kids a literal carrot as a reward, I don't think it would work very well.

I'll keep you all posted on how it goes.  But, to put things into perspective, both my kids seem to be happy and well-adjusted little boys.  They both seem to "get it," meaning they know how to function within their little stations in this world.  That is probably much more important than what percentile they fall into scholastically.  One of Lil' S1's good friends was admitted to the psychiatric department at the children's hospital last night.  I don't know why exactly, but I do know an ambulance had to come get him at school, and they don't send ambulances to schools for nothing.  It's obviously a sad situation all around.  His parents are going through a terrible divorce, and it seems like their dad is running away from it all, putting everything on their mom's plate, and she just can't handle the full load.

We help out when we can, but there's only so much we can (or, truthfully, are willing to) do.  Last night for instance, she texted S and asked if she could come over and spend the night at her house with her youngest child (the little brother of the kid in the hospital), so that she could stay at the hospital with her oldest son.  S isn't in town, so she can't do it, and I have to watch my kids so I can't do it.  Plus, that's a big ask, in general.  We know these people, but were not super close friends.  But, maybe that shouldn't matter.  Maybe you should just help people who need help, because it's what you should do.  I don't know.  I mean, what I would like to do, all things equal, is phase these people out of our lives.  It's too much drama, and their kids get along less and less well with our kids as they get older.  Lil' S2 doesn't even like their youngest son, even though they're the same age.  (This kid has a serious temper and a hitting problem -- a legit one, not a playful, watched-too-many-episode-of-Power-Rangers one -- which explains why Lil' S2 doesn't like him.  I wouldn't like him either.)  But all things aren't equal, and these kids need stable adults in their lives, and this woman needs help.  Knowing this, is it ethical to say "it's not our my problem" or "I have my own family to worry about" and wash your hand of the whole situation ?  I don't know.  I really don't.

But I do know that suddenly spelling test don't seem like a very big deal.

Until next time...

Entry 485: Impeachment and Whatnot

The impeachment trials have started as you've undoubtedly heard.  They're are a good thing, I think.  The only reason they wouldn't be is if they turn public favor toward our scurrilous president, but I don't think they will do that.  They might not do much good in that regard, but I think they're unlikely to do much bad either.  Plus, public opinion aside, somebody has to hold this guy accountable for his misdeeds, and it's certainly not going to be the Republican-held Senate.  They're ride-or-die with Trump, as has been confirmed and reconfirmed many times.  Reps give public rationales about why they still support Trump, but there really is only one rationale: He's their guy and they will defend him no matter what he does -- literally.  That's it; that's the bottom line.  Everything else is just spin.

I'm keeping up on the proceedings, but I'm not absorbed in them.  It's the ongoing struggle of staying informed and staying sane.  The NPR Politics Podcast has gone to a daily format, which is nice because each episode is only about 15 minutes long.  At 1.5 speed (you get used to it), skipping the ads, you can usually knock those suckers out in under 10 minutes.  Supplement that with The Weeds (twice weekly) and The Political Gabfest (weekly), and you've got yourself a pretty solid information base.

I also have a subscription to the Washington Post, but I don't read it all that often.  I mainly have it to support my city's paper -- real journalism is important, y'know.  The subscription was a Christmas gift my dad got me -- or, technically, that I got myself.  We do a not-so-secret-Santa gift exchange each year in my extended family, and last year I drew my mom and my dad drew me.  I asked for the subscription to the Post, and my mom wanted a subscription to Acorn TV, but it got too confusing setting up and paying for an account for the other person, so we just agreed to pay for our own thing and call it good.  Actually, that's not a bad way to do gifts now that I think about it: You make a pact with a friend that you are each going to buy something nice for yourself.  That way you get exactly what you want, and you still have that sense of connection with another person.

In other news, speaking of subscription services, it sounds like Disney+ is the new BMOC.  I doubt we will get it, but maybe...  I would like to check out The Mandalorian, and The Simpsons catalog is quite enticing, but my kids have never been specifically into Disney movies, and we already have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Plus, and HBO Now.  At some point you have to cry uncle on the streaming services or you will end up paying way more for TV than you did before you cut the cord.

Actually, you can get a package of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for $12.99, which isn't terrible.  I would do that if ESPN+ actually was ESPN+ -- meaning it has everything ESPN has plus additional content -- but it's not.  For example, you can't get Monday Night Football on ESPN+, and that's the only thing I watch regularly on ESPN.  It's always the NFL, man.  They're going to be the last thing traditional cable has.  Their Sunday Ticket is probably single-handedly keeping DIRECTV in business, and their live games on NFL Network and ESPN are huge money deals.  (ESPN paid in the billions for Monday Night Football.)  So, I doubt the NFL is going to make their non-network games available on a $12.99/month streaming services anytime soon.

The model I would like is a pay-per-game model.  Like, if I could stream a non-network NFL game the same way you can rent a movie -- a $5 one-off -- I would probably spend at least $15 a month doing that.  But I'm just not going to pay $60 a month for a year-round DIRECTV subscription and then pay an additional $100 a month during the football season for Sunday Ticket.  Although, I did do that for two years, and the Seahawks made the Super Bowl both years, so, hmm...

Right now I have a pretty good system going -- I have solid network reception with my HD antenna, and then I have my parents' cable login credentials for everything else.  I still can't watch some Seahawks games, but that's fine -- it motivates me to spend more time with the kids.  I also have my friend JY's cable credentials, but he has Xfinity, and they went to a "two step" authorization, so every time I want to log in, I have to hope he's looking at his phone to send me the temporary pass code.

"Hey, man, can you send me that five digit code you just got?"
"37861"
"It expired -- you didn't reply fast enough.  Hold on, I'll get you a new one."
"Dude, I'm on vacation in Maui."

(Actual conversation.)

Well, I started out with a political post and somehow veered off into streaming services.  I should probably wrap it up here, as my Lil' S2's Netflix (speak of the devil) show is about to end.  He's really into Power Rangers these days.  He loves fighting and wrestling and playing "football" (i.e., wrestling with a football involved).  It's actually gotten to be a bit much.  He will just walk up to S or I and start kicking and punching us.  The other day he socked me in the ear -- like right on the tip of the ear -- and it legit hurt.  I'm watching him for the day, while S is at an all-day robotics event with Lil' S1.  It started at 8:30am and doesn't end until 4:00pm!  She's been texting how boring it is.  I would feel guilty for getting out of it, but we actually did stop by for a few hours.  Plus, she's leaving for a work trip early tomorrow morning and not returning until Friday.  So, I will be doing more than my fair share of childcare very soon.



Until next time...

Entry 484: Owner of Broken Phone

My phone broke.  It's pretty annoying.  It doesn't get service.  Sometimes I can get it by turning the phone off and on again and taking out the sim chip and putting it back in and praying to Amen-Ra, but then it just goes out again an hour later.  I looked for solutions online, but nothing worked, and I'm loath to spend a year of my life in a help session with a robot or a contractor in Bangalore.  I'm just gonna get a new phone.  It's time for an upgrade anyway -- unfortunately.  I hate upgrading things.  I absolutely despise the pressure to constantly get the "latest and greatest" when I'm perfectly happy with my old thing that was the top of the line, like, four years ago.  But so it goes.  It's Tim Apple's world, and we're forced to live in it.

Well, maybe not "forced," but at least compelled.  I thought about going rogue and just not having cell phone service.  I can still use a lot of the functionality on my phone without service, provided I have a WiFi connection.  All the apps work and I can still receive iPhone-to-iPhone texts and calls.  But there are a few crucial things for which I need service, such as the ability to speak with coworkers when I work from home and the GPS map app.  I use those two things all the time, and it adversely affects my life to not have them.  So, I think a trip to Verizon is on the horizon.  In the meantime, here's Andre Rison.

[Fun fact: Andre Rison is the only player in NFL history to post 1,000 receiving yards and have his house burned down by his girlfriend in the same year.]

In other news, it was a busy week, since I last posted.  We took the boys trick-or-treating, which was a huge success.*  I dressed up like Billy Hoyle from White Men Can't Jump.  It's one of those costumes where 65% of the population will have no idea who you are, but the other 35% will so appreciate it that it makes up for it.  One guy said it was, "the best costume of the night," and this ten-year old boy said, "I know who you are!  You're the guy from White Men Can't Jump!"  I was amazed he'd even seen the movie.  It's almost 20 years older than he is.  It was pretty cool.

*Happy belated birthday to my sister K -- sorry, I forgot to reach out on your actual birthday.

My kids went as transformers and got so much candy we hid three-fourths of it after they went to sleep, and they didn't even notice.  I've been dipping into it a little bit, but I'm not huge on Halloween candy.  Twix are good and Snickers are decent, but I don't like much beyond those two things.  I'm a snob when it comes to candy.  I like the fancy shit -- See's candies and salted dark chocolate and the like.  The typical Halloween stuff -- Skittles, Milky Way, Starbust, etc. -- don't cut it for me anymore.  They aren't worth the calories.

The day after Halloween, we dropped the kids off at school, and then hightailed it to Columbus, Ohio -- a seven hour drive -- for our friend R's wedding.  We should have just flown.  Originally, we were going to bring the boys, and we didn't want to pay $1,500 in airfare, so we didn't buy tickets.  But then S's parents agreed to watch them, and for some reason -- inertia, I suppose -- we never reevaluated our decision to drive.  We could've saved a lot of time.  Oh well.

It's not a terrible drive.  It's pretty in a lot of areas, but it's depressing in others, because you drive through these cities that progress forgot.  Lots of abandoned shopping centers and run-down buildings and dilapidated homes.  When you see swaths of the country like this, you really do understand why so many middle-Americans have so much resentment toward "coastal elites" like myself.  Why this resentment manifests in Trumpism and not, say, Bernie Sanders-style redistribution, however, is something I still don't have a good grasp on (or maybe I do: racism).  Although, I only saw one "Trump, Pence" sign the entire drive, so I'll consider that a win.

S feels especially unwelcome in such parts of the country given her brown skin.  We try to stick to making pit stops in urban (or at least urban-ish) places.  That's one nice thing about this country: Even in the reddest of states there are always pockets of blue in the cities.  And Ohio is a straight-up red state now.  It swapped with Virginia, which, thanks largely to the ever expanding DC suburbs, now has a completely Democrat-majority state government.

A funny thing about S is that she will chalk up every travel inconvenience to being in a different state.  We stopped at a gas station, and they had a mini-mart, but no public bathroom.
"What?  They don't have a bathroom.  That's weird," I said.
"That's Ohio for you!" S responded.
I started chuckling, "Oh, apparently I didn't know that Ohio was known for it's lack of gas station bathrooms."

Anyway, the wedding and the related wedding activities were all really nice.  So many friends together in one place -- I love that.  The ceremony was one of the best I've ever witnessed.  It told the story of how R and her now husband M met.  I think R wrote it, and the officiant is an actor, so it was very well-written and well-delivered, funny and heartfelt, not too long nor too short.  It was excellent all-around.

The reception was fun also, but the dance floor never really got going until the very end.  R and M built the playlist themselves, and they made a fatal mistake (IMHO) of picking music that's fun to listen to and reminisce to, but not good to dance to.  Take Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young for example.  That's a perfect song for a bunch of middle-aged, drunk, white people (the primary constituency of this wedding) to sing along with at a bar, but it's a bad song for dancing.  Every time the dance floor really picked up for a moment, one of these mood-killing songs would come on, and everybody would leave to go get a drink or mingle.  There was no consistency.

The thing is, you just gotta stick to the classics, even if that's not normally your preferred style of music.  When I made the playlist for my wedding reception, it was all dance hits people know -- C+C Music Factory, Rob Bass, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Technotronic, Salt-N-Pepa, LMFAO, Black-Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, etc.  Most of that is stuff I would never listen to on my own, but it's great for weddings because it gets the party going on the dance floor and that's where the party's at.  Toward the end of the reception, another person who was frustrated with the musical selection strong-armed the DJ (who didn't seem to be doing anything at all) into putting on some actual dance music, and everybody got super into it, and it was a fun way to go out.



After the reception, we went to the after party back at the hotel.  Unfortunately, we were staying at a different hotel down the street, so we had to bail "early" (around 12:30 am), because S was tired.  I could've stayed out all night, but it's just as well.  This way I wasn't a slug on the drive home.  In fact, I drove the entire way.  I told S we would switch when I got tired, but I never got tired.  We made it home about as fast as one could make it without risking a reckless driving ticket.  There was almost no traffic, and we stopped only once, briefly for gas -- we didn't even get lunch.  Neither of us were hungry, probably because we ate (and drank) so much the night before.  In fact, other than a small breakfast at the hotel, I didn't eat anything until 8:30 that night.

The boys were safe and happy when we got back, which was great.  I hear they are surprisingly easy to manage when we are not around.  It's a different story when actually are here, but I'll save that for a different post.

Until next time...

Entry 483: Another Weekend Away

S and I are headed to a wedding in Ohio on Friday, sans kids, so it will be my second weekend away from the boys in three weeks.  This trip will be much shorter than my other one.  We drive up Friday afternoon, hit the wedding activities Friday evening and Saturday, and then drive back on Sunday.  It should be fun.  It's our good friend R, so we will be surrounded by familiar faces -- S is actually in the wedding.  We (meaning I) will just have to make sure to not drink too much Saturday night at the reception.  Unlike when taking a flight, we (meaning I) will actually have to operator a massive vehicle Sunday morning.

Actually, I've found I typically don't get very drunk at weddings.  I think it's the dancing that keeps me honest.  It gives me something else to do.  My whole thing is that I'm almost exclusively a social drinker.  I practically never drink in private, but if I'm out with friends at a bar, I will frequently get caught up in the merriment and then realize I've had three beers and the night is only half over.  At weddings, it's easy to avoid this trap.  You just dance -- Lady Gaga style.  Now, if there is an after party, that's a whole other story.  And everybody at this wedding will be middle-age or older.  You might think that this would work against excessive drinking (because, you know, old people are, like, such losers), but I suspect it will go the other way.  Everybody is going to go wild because they are away from their kids for a night.  The people you have to fear the most are the parents who don't get out much.  At the wedding shower a few weeks ago, S went out afterward for the bachelorette party, and in the wee hours of the morning, long after she had come home, she was getting drunken texts from the other ladies saying things like "where you at girl?"

[Although actually this entire song is about how she has to "just dance" *because* she's so fucked up.  Hmm... maybe the not the greatest example.]

In other news, it's been a good past few days for content consumption for me.  S and I started watching Fleabag, which is good, but not nearly as good as everybody else is saying (it won, like, a thousand Emmys and the critics love it).  I feel like I would enjoy it a lot more if I stumbled into it blind, instead of it coming so highly recommended.  Expectations are a bitch.

As far as heartfelt raunchy comedies with female leads go, Booksmart, which S and I also watched recently is far superior to Fleabag.  I mean, they aren't really comparable because one's a movie and the other is a show.  But judging purely by watching-joy, the former takes the cake easily.  In fact here's a bold claim: Booksmart is the best buddy comedy I've ever seen.  It's cut out of the Superbad mold, but it's just better.  And it transcends the goofy, lewd, teenage comedy genre.  It beats out other buddy comedies I enjoyed like Sideways, Y Tu Mamá También, and Dumb and Dumber.  In fact, I'll take it a step further: It's probably one of my top-20 movies of all time.  I'm not ready to release an official update of my Top 100 list, but I'd tentatively put it somewhere around 17.  I thought it was that good.



Also, it's been an excellent past few days of sports watching.  On Sunday and Monday, I watched the Seahawks win (well, I saw the extended highlights package, at least), and I watched both my fantasy football teams seal victories in the night games to move me to 6-2 in one league and 8-0 (!) in the other.  Then last night I watched DC's own Washington Nationals force a seventh game of the World Series, and I watched the Sounders advance to the MLS finals for the third time in four years, a supremely stunning result given their opponent was the greatest regular season team in league history.  (Championship game is on Sunday.)  If the Nats win tonight, it will round out a truly glorious span of sporting consumption.  I'll have to catch most of it on the radio, as I have to pick up S's parents at Dulles.  They're coming in to watch the kids for the wedding, so it's a worthwhile trade-off.



In fact, I should probably eat and all that, so that I can get there on time.

Until next time...

Entry 482: A Trip of Business and Pleasure

Back from a quick trip to Seattle.  It was ostensibly for work -- I attended a big conference in my industry -- but it was something of a (short) personal vacation as well.  I got to hang out with a bunch of friends and family.  And honestly, that was part of the reason my company sent me out there.  They know I'm from the area and that I would probably appreciate traveling there on the company dime.  They're good about stuff like that.

I flew in on Friday and stayed one night with my friend JY.  I had the Lyft driver take me straight to a pub from the airport, which is always ominous, but it actually wasn't a crazy night at all.  We had a pint or two at an old stamping grounds, and then we watched Deadpool, which was better than I was expecting.  (I'm not into the MCU or superhero blockbusters.)  I did have trouble getting over the fact that the main character's name is Wade Wilson -- the same as the recently-deceased ex-Vikings quarterback -- but I doubt that bothered many people other than me.

[This one drove me crazy until I looked it up: "Oh, right!  Brody's wife!  Of course!"]

The next day, we watched the Oregon-Washington football game with JY's mom and his brother, whom I hadn't seen in, like, 10 years.  It was fun.  It's a big rivalry game.  They're all Ducks fans (even though JY went to UW); I used to be a Huskies fan, back in the day, but I mostly lost the love sometime over the years.  I still root for them, but I don't really care when they lose, so it's actually a perfect sports relationship: Happy when they win; indifferent when they lose.  I wish that's how all my fandom was.  JY and his fam are not like this with the Ducks -- not at all.  Early in the game the Huskies were leading and everybody was getting a bit salty (especially JY).  Ultimately, however, the Ducks came back and pulled it out, so everybody was happy, including me, as I'd rather have UW lose than spend the day with a bunch of mopey people.  Plus, it was JY's birthday.  Plus, I was also watching the Sounders game on my phone (another team with which I have a very healthy sports relationship), and they won.

I got some grief from the peanut gallery for watching soccer, but I don't care.  I don't understand the mockery of certain sports by fans of other sports.  If you just don't care for a sport, the way I don't care for white wine, then that's fine.  But I don't denounce the drinking of white wine.  I just prefer red is all.  I mean, if you're watching 19-year-olds throw a ball and slam into each other on a field, I don't think you have much room to make fun of people for watching pretty much anything.

The next day I went down to UP to visit my family for lunch.  It was a brief trip, but it worked out perfectly.  JY let me borrow his car, which was great, but I was now staying at a hotel for the conference in downtown Seattle, and he lives in North Seattle many miles away.  For me to get to his house from the hotel would have added literally 45 minutes to my trip to UP, and it's only about an hour-long trip total.  As luck would have it though, my friend JW has a parking pass for work in a lot right by my hotel, so I was able to take JY's car the night before and park it in the lot overnight, and then just head down to UP the next day straightaway.  That ended up being a huge convenience, as I had to do a bunch of stuff for the conference before I could leave.  You know how in life it often seems as if the world is conspiring in a manner just to irritate you specifically?  Well, this was one of those times that helps balance that out.  I too frequently complain about life's annoyances, so I wanted to call out an instance in which things broke the other way.

I spent all of Monday attending conference activities.  They were fine.  I went to a bunch of talks -- some good, some bad, some in the middle.  I did a bit of networking (not my forte) and met a prospective employee, which were the most important parts of the trip, work-wise.  My company is trying to expand our R&D "presence" in the industry, so my main goal was just to be an ambassador.  I spoke briefly with my advisor and a few other former mentors, but they're bigwigs at this conference, so it was hard to get their ears for longer than 30 seconds.

This type of interaction wears me out.  I'm not bad at it, by any means, I just find it kind of stressful.  So, Monday night I "treated" myself to a $25 Cobb salad and a $8 pint of Modelo.  Really, I just didn't want to leave the hotel, so I went to the (always overpriced) hotel bar for dinner.  Also, I found that I kinda dig hotel bars.  There's something comforting about dining alone in a place where you are supposed to dine alone.  I would have liked it more if the Monday Night Football game was close, but by the time I sat down the Patriots were beating the Jets like 33-0.  Oh well.

The next day, I finished up at the conference by attending a few more talks (some good, some bad, some in the middle), and then I headed back north with JY to get dinner and watch the World Series game (Nats!).  Later in the night JW came and picked me up, and we met BJ and his brother DJ at another old stamping ground.  Once I heard DJ was coming, I knew it was going to be a boozy night.  That dude doesn't miss an opportunity to tie one on, work night or otherwise.  But I was game.  I had an early flight home the next day (I got up at 5:00 am to catch it), but I didn't have any kids to worry about, and flights suck anyway.  Yeah, being hung over would make it even more miserable, but either way it's a wasted day -- might as well have some fun.  And we did.

I made it home the next day without any major incident.  As unluck would have it, I landed at Dulles Airport at 4:30 pm, which if you are familiar with the area you know is literally the very worst time you can possibly land given traffic patterns.  It took an hour and a half to go from the airport to my house, which is double how long it takes not during rush hour.  My Lyft driver made it much more tolerable, however, by talking sports with me the entire time.  Dude knew his shit too.  About 30 seconds into a conversation about sports I can tell whether somebody is a true aficionado or a casual fan.  This guy was definitely the former.  I happily gave him the largest recommended tip.

The trip was great overall.  But I'm happy to be back.  I don't like being away from my kids for that long.  I don't understand how deadbeat dads do it.

Until next time...

Entry 481: The Binder and Other Tales

A lot going on this weekend, but before I get to any of that let's get an update on the ongoing Pokémon saga.  After posting my last entry, I went to pick up Lil' S1 at school, and he was holding a binder in his hands.

"Hey, Daddy!" he exclaimed. "Check this out!  I traded some of my cards for it!"

Somehow he swung a deal in which he swapped a few of his cards for an entire Pokémon binder.  Most of the cards had been taken out, but not all of them, and still it was a big binder with some other kids name on it.  (His "BFF" from the last post.)

"Oh jeez..." I said.  "You can't keep this.  Go give it back."
"Why?!  I traded for it."
"I know but you can't trade for an entire binder from some other kid."
"Why not?  He wanted to."
"Because I don't know if his parents were expecting him to trade his entire binder... I mean, it's got his name on it in permanent marker."
"We can just cross it off and write my name."

You gotta love the naive shamelessness of seven-year-olds.  He wants to make some other kid's Pokémon collection his own.  It reminds me of that scene in The Sopranos when Robert Patrick takes his son's SUV and gives it to Tony to pay off his gambling debt, and then Tony gives it to Meadow, and Meadow is wondering why she now has some other kids car.



The rightful owner of the binder was already gone for the day, and it was Friday afternoon, so we just took the folder home for the weekend.  I made Lil' S1 give it back to him on Monday though.  He was pretty mad about it at first, but then we got him his own folder and that cooled him off.  The rest of the week elapsed without an further Pokémon incident.  Let's hope that that's a trend that continues for a long time.

In other news, our downstairs is currently being occupy by our friend RB's sister and her family.  They have 13-year-old twins -- a boy and a girl, but everybody thinks they're two girls.  The boy has long hair, and he looks like his sister facially (they are twins after all), and they have almost identical builds, so it's not an unreasonable assumption.  Lil' S1 thought they were both girls (he still calls them "the girls" even after I corrected him), and I probably would've too if I didn't already know better.  They look so similar I was a bit worried at first that I wouldn't be able to keep them straight, but it's not that hard after you spend some time with them.

The boy doesn't seem to care much that people confuse him for a girl, which is good.  The thing is, if you're not sure of somebody's gender, why even bring it up?  There's no reason to ask if people are sisters or to use a gendered term when referring to somebody whose gender isn't blatantly obvious.  There's a person who goes to my gym whose gender identity I legitimately don't know.  They held the door for me the other day.  Often when somebody does this for me I say "Thank you, sir" or "Thank you, ma'am" with a bit of half-joking formality.  But this time I just said, "Thanks."  It's not that hard.

Lil' S1 seems to really like them, and they like him -- or at least they humor him -- which is great.  I think they had similar interests when they were his age.  The good thing about Lil' S1 is that he's a walking, talking ice-breaker.  I didn't realize what a little chatterbox he can be.  He'll just start going, "Do you like Pokémon? ... Do you like Super Smash Bros.? ... Once we saw bats outside ... That's my favorite book ... Do you wanna see my safe? ... Do you like Minecraft?"  And if you engage him, he will tell you the gory details of whatever the subject is.  He'll explain entire plots of TV episodes and breakdown the power levels of individual Pokémon.  But it's good for our present company because I think they're a bit on shyer side.  I haven't seen him get on with older kids this well before.  It's nice.

They are in town for the weekend for RB's wedding shower.  S is heavily involved in it as well.  Part of the festivities is the DC Army 10-mile run this morning.  I am not doing that.  I have to watch the kids (and I don't willingly wake up that early unless I'm being paid or catching a flight).  The actual shower is this afternoon, and I will go to that, and then there is a bachelorette party at night, which, like the run, I will not go to.  I think men are invited to it, but, again, I have to watch the kids, and I don't really want to go anyway.  I don't have tomorrow off for Columbus Day like many others do, so staying out even moderately late does not sound very appealing.

After RB's family leaves, my parents will come to visit.  Actually, they will come back to visit, as they were here the past few days, and then they went to Connecticut for the weekend.  They're going to visit my cousins (my dad's nephew and niece) whom I've never met.  They will be meeting them for the first time.  Yes, I'm aware it's weird to have adult cousins you've known about pretty much your entire life, but have literally never met, but that's how it is.  S says I'm a robot because I'm so ambivalent about this.  But I try to explain to her the fact that I've never met them is precisely the source of my ambivalence.  There was never a there there.  It's just not something I ever had a chance to develop strong feelings about.

Anyway, it's nice to have people over.  It's fun, and also satisfying.  It's like: That's part of why we got this house, y'know.  To have our family and friends stay with us.  It feels nice.

Alright, I should go get dressed or get the kids dressed or something.  Got a long day ahead of us.

Until next time...

Entry 480: Now They're BFFs Apparently

Update to my last post: Everything got resolved quite nicely with respect to the swirl of Pokémon theft surrounding my oldest son.  I didn't get involved at all, and that proved to be a wise decision.  Kids usually figure shit out on their own, and if they don't, then they learn from it, and as long as the stakes are relatively low, that's a good thing.  Sometimes, I think, the best move is just to butt out, which is nice, as it also means less work on me, the parent.

He got his book back, the Pokémon catalog, which I'm legitimately surprised by.  I thought that thing was gone for good.  A girl at his school "found" it and gave it to him.  This little girl already has a reputation for being "manipulative" (three different sets of parents have independently used this exact adjective to describe her), so it's quite possible she was the one who took it in the first place.  Maybe she started to feel guilty; maybe an adult started to question why she had a book with my son's name written all over it; maybe she really did find it and I shouldn't be so cynical.  Dunno; don't care; glad he got it back.

As for the situation in which he "found" another kid's card, last night we had the following conversation:

Him: Hey, Daddy, you know that Pokémon card you wanted me to give back to Shawn (pseudonym)?  I gave it back to him today.
Me: That's good.  Did you tell him you took it in the first place?
Him: No...  I told him I found it in the cafeteria.
Me: Okay... better than nothing, I guess.  Did he punch you, like you said he would?
Him: No.
Me: What did he say?
Him: He said, "Aw, thanks, bro.  I was looking for this." ...  Actually, he can't get mad at me.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because we're BFFs now!
S (overhearing, chuckling): Do you even know what BFF stands for?
Him: Yeah -- Best Friends Forever!

So, apparently they're BFFs.  Although, my guess is they're actually BFFTTBPAFW: Best Friends For The Time Being, Probably A Few Weeks.  Still, that's a positive result, all things considered.

Unfortunately, once one issue resolves itself another one pops up.  We got two notes sent home to us from Lil' S1's teacher about misbehavior.  The first one was for peeing in the bathroom sink (seriously); the second one was for reading a book during math lesson.  The thing about Lil' S1, and maybe this is true of most kids, is that he will form a defense of himself when he gets in trouble and then stick to it like glue.  In this case, he claims he had to go so badly, and all the stalls and urinals were occupied, that he had to go in the sink.  This is plausible, kinda, sorta, but I'm not buying it.  Kids take like 20 seconds to pee, something would've opened up, and this kid can hold his pee seemingly forever when he's doing something he enjoys and doesn't want to take a break (watching a movie, playing video games, etc.).  When I pointed this out to him, he still said he couldn't hold it and had to go in the sink.  Whatever.

With the reading during math lesson, he said he didn't feel well, because he got in trouble, and reading books makes him feel better.  I'm much more sympathetic to this defense.  It seems reasonable that a kid would be upset after being "busted" by the teacher and would need a cool-off period before resuming normal activities.  Plus, he was reading a book.  It's not like he was disrupting class or playing with contraband or something like that.  When it comes to bad things to do during math lesson, reading is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

But, of course, he should pay attention, and he shouldn't pee in the sink (so uncouth!), and if we get any more notices from his teacher, we will have to hit him where it hurts: screen time.  We will cut him off for a while -- no video games, no iPad, no TV.  It will be harder on us than it will be on him, but it's definitely something that will get his attention.

Speaking of children behaving badly: Impeachment!  It looks like our man-child president has finally crossed the moderate Democrats line.  I'm personally in favor of it.  It's the right thing to do, and politically I don't think it moves the needle much one way or the other.  My hunch is that, if anything, it will hurt his reelection bid, but that's just that: a guess -- and a biased one at that.  Anyway, I'm sure I will have more to say about that at a future date.

In other news, I won my fantasy baseball league for the third year in a row (and made the finals for the fourth straight season).  This is a truly remarkable feat.  The thing about fantasy sports is that there is so much randomness involved that nobody can be that good.  It's a bit like poker that way.  You can do everything right and still lose because your opponent just gets the cards.  On the flip side, you can not even pay attention and win by total fluke.   So, being champion of a legitimate league once is really lucky, let alone three times.  But, it also takes some skill.  I drafted exquisitely this year, somehow getting Mike Trout (aka the Neckless Baseball God), Alex Bregman, and Ronald Acuña Jr. with my first three picks.  Then I hit on a bunch of late-round sleepers/waiver-wire pickups like Josh Bell, Ketel Marte, Joey Gallo, Charlie Morton, and Lance Lynn.  I lost about half my team to season-ending injury throughout the playoffs but still managed to claim victory.  Ex-Mariner James Paxton really came through for me.

[Yes, Mike!  Celebrate that championship!  Just fantasy, of course.  The Angels don't make the playoffs in real life... Hey, neither do the Mariners -- it's cool.]

I joined a second league this year and made the playoffs in it, as well.  But, I lost in the first round to my buddy RW.  It was ridiculously close.  In the final game of the week, I had a single player left, J.T. Realmuto, and he had nobody left.  I was losing the deciding category, OPS, by like .005 points.  Realmuto struck out in his first at bat which dropped me down even lower, but then he doubled in his second at bat, which put me up by a few hundredths of a point.  In his third at bat, he made another out, which dropped me exactly .001 points in behind.  Realmuto was on pace to come up twice more, and our match hinged on what he did in those final plate appearances -- a hit or a walk in either and I would win, two outs and RW would win.  I was following the game online; RW was watching it at a bar; and we were texting back and forth.  Realmuto's spot came up in the order and... pinch-hitter.  What?!  No!!!  He was out of the game.  Our match was over.  I lost by .001 OPS points.  Oh, well.  I shook it off pretty easily.  I was still feeling good from winning my other league, and RW seemed happier about it than I would have been.  Bully for him.

Alright, that's probably more fantasy baseball talk then anybody wanted to read, so I'll stop now.

Until next time...

Entry 479: No Honor Among (Child) Thieves

Had some parental challenges this week having to do with thievery.  Lil' S1 is really into Pokémon, and he likes to bring his cards and books to school.  I'm not in favor of this, for reasons that will become obvious (and probably already are), but I let it go, because it's not a fight I want to have every morning, because it's a chance for him to learn how to take care of stuff, and because after-care is the only time he sees some of the kids who are also into Pokémon.  So, the other day, he came home in tears, because one of the kids "stole" his Pokémon guide book -- this thick catalog of Pokémon profiles.  He said it was Andy (not his real name), some kid I didn't know.  So, I get annoyed, because I didn't really want him to take that book to school in the first place, and also because I was torn between whether or not I should intervene.  Should I talk to the after-care supervisor and maybe Andy's parents (whomever they are), and try to sort it out, or let him figure it out on his own and maybe learn a lesson the hard way?

I decide to initially take a hands-off approach.  I told him to try to get Andy to give him the book back by himself.  So, the next day he comes home and says Andy told him he didn't take it, and he believes him.  I ask him why he thought Andy took it in the first place, and he gives me a byzantine story with myriad unimportant details and a half dozen pointless digressions.  But I do my best to sort through the web, and when I do, it starts to sound more like he lost the book -- or most likely he forgot about the book, left it somewhere, and when he came back for it later, it was gone.  Probably some kid did take it, maybe even Andy, but that's just a guess.  Lil' S1's name is written all over the book, so there's an outside chance a good Samaritan found it and will return it to him, but that's unlikely.  I think this is a case of "finders keepers, losers weepers," literally.

The thing is I don't feel much sympathy for Lil' S1, because he later told me that he did almost the exact same thing to a different kid.  This other kid left one of his Pokémon cards behind, and Lil' S1 pocketed it and took it home instead of giving it back to him.  I was extremely disappointed when I heard this, and I told him he had to give it back.  He said that the kid would punch him.  We went back and forth for while, but he insisted that this kid would hit him if he found out he took it.  I'm extremely skeptical of this, but part of growing up is self-preservation, so that's something else he has to navigate on his own.  (Although, it's strange that he has enough sense to not want to get beat up for returning the card, but not enough sense to not take it in the first place.)  I mean, it seems incredibly unlikely to me, but what if this kid is super aggressive, and he does beat him up, because I made him give the card back.  Is that good parenting?



Again, I was in a dilemma about what to do.  Ultimately, I punted.  I put the card in his backpack, and I told him that I think he should give it back, but that it was up to him.  I haven't checked yet, but I guarantee you that card is still where I put it.  No seven-year-old has that type of rectitude.  Fine.  He can have a "pass" for this one.  (It's a single Pokémon card, not exactly grand larceny.)  But, I'm going to be bothering him everyday for a while to make sure he doesn't do it again.  He's going to get sick of me talking about it -- nuisance parenting, that's my strategy.

To add to the story, a few nights ago Lil' S1 woke up in the middle of the night crying for S.  I went in to see what was wrong, and he just kept on saying, "I don't know."  I wonder if it's related to all this Pokémon stuff.  I think he knows what he did was wrong.  I think that's why he told me about it.  It might have been a confession, or at least he wanted to gauge my reaction.  Maybe this has been weighing on him.  He will also say things to S sometimes about what a bad kid he is.  When I was his age I had a super guilty conscience.  I still do, to some degree, but not like when I was a kid.  I wonder if he's the same way.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is stuff he's just going to have to figure out on his own.  As a parent, you always want to help your kid, but you can't think their thoughts for them.  (And would you want to, even if you could?)  You can give them food, shelter, and love, but other than that I think they have to pretty much do the rest.  Maybe you can give them a bit of advice here or there, but that's about it.  On that front, my current goal is to convey to Lil' S1 two things: 1) Don't take valuable stuff to school; 2) Don't steal.  If he learns that from these incidents, it will be a huge success.

Until next time...

Entry 478: Promotional Material

I haven't been able to post anything here for a few weeks, because I've busy with work.  It's a strange, unsettling feeling, being busy with work, but it might become the new norm.  We just landed a huge (by our standards) contract, and it means more work for me, for everybody, so for me too.  It also means, I've been told, a promotion.  Over the next year or so, we are hiring more staff in my department, and I'm going to be the director of the team.  I'll get more money and an office, which is cool (the former more so than the latter).

The work itself, eh, I'm not super excited about it.  I'm not unexcited about it, but I'm not stoked either.  I'm open to it -- that's the best way to put it.  It's likely going to be a lot more managing and a lot less in-the-weeds work.  I've never really been a manager before, but from what I know about myself, I think I will like it less than what I do now.  But I'll still get to do some of what I do now, and when we do expand, there's really no way I can stay at my current position anyway.  Somebody has to be the department director, and I'm literally the only person in the world who can do it without a substantial learning curve.  Even if I said no, I would end up doing it anyway, because I'd be the only person in the office who could do it for, like, the two years.  So, if I going to end up doing anyway, I might as well do it right and get the benefits that come along with.

Also, I might like it -- I dunno.  It's a way I can come out of my comfort zone a little bit and try something slightly different without totally tipping my life over.  I actually kind of enjoyed negotiating the parameters of my new position with my bosses.  (Advocating for yourself and getting what you asked for feels pretty good.)  And it's fun to look over résumés of prospective hires.  Plus, I'm going to get to "represent" the company more now, which is working out in my favor in the short-term, because they're sending me to Seattle for a conference, so I'll get a free trip to see friends.  Although, it's just luck the conference is in Seattle.  If it was in Akron, Ohio, I wouldn't be as excited about it.  (No offense to the fine people of Akron.  I rocked a Zips shirt for many years -- it was one of my favorite tees.)

In other news, things have just been floating along normally here at the G&G household.  The kids seem to be doing well at their new school, and the commute (five minutes driving, 20 minutes walking) is easy on my schedule.  Lil' S1 is kinda obsessed with Pokémon and Super Smash Bros.  He pretty much just wants to play Nintendo whenever he's home.  He's pretty good too.  He beats me about two-thirds of the time, maybe more.  S isn't really into him playing video games.  She says it's because I get caught up playing them too, and then she has to be the "bad guy" to get us to quit.  It's father-son bonding, I tell her.  Actually, that might be part of it: She feels a bit left out when we play.

Lil' S2 is kinda into video games, but doesn't have the motor skills to play yet.  His brother got him to play against him once, and of course, he showed no mercy and just destroyed him.  He started crying, but it was kinda cute because he said, "I'm only four!  I don't know how to push the buttons right yet!"

Let's see... what else... S and I started watching a new show, which is probably the most exciting other thing I have to report.  It's called Black Monday, and it's set at a sleazy stock brokerage in the months immediate prior to the big Big Monday crash of 1987.  Don Cheadle and Regina Hall play the two principal owners of the firm, and they are both frickin' hysterical.  Andrew Rannells and Paul Scheer are also really funny in it.  Kadeem Hardison makes an appearance as Regina Hall's husband, and I couldn't believe it was him when I saw his name.  He's unrecognizable from his days as Dwayne Wayne.  He definitely put on some weight, but facially I didn't even recognize him.  I mean, Sean Astin put on some weight too, and I instantly knew it was him watching Stranger Things.

One thing about the show, however, is that I can only handle one episode a night.  It's not a binge-watch for me.  The excesses of the '80s are a key theme, and comedy styling mirrors this, so the jokes are rapid-fire and offensive.  It feels hedonistic to watch.  Also, it's one of those shows where nobody is a good person, so you can't really root for anybody.  But what it lacks in humanity, it makes up for in hilarity.  They throw in a lot of pop culture Easter eggs, which mostly go over S's head ('80s pop culture isn't her jam), but which I greatly appreciate.  My favorite one so far (paraphrase):

Person 1: I'm going to go as Darth Vader for Halloween.  I just got the mask.  It's the actual one from the film!
Person 2: What?!  You got a Darth Vader mask used in a Star Wars movie?!
Person 1: No.  It's the one from the rape scene in Revenge of the Nerds.

Now that is totally problematic comedy gold.

Until next time...

Entry 477: The Fake End of Summer

Labor Day is often considered the end of summer, but due to global warming, the hot days just keep on coming.  Forecasts have us in the 90s next week.  This used to be my favorite time of the year weather-wise -- when it's t-shirt and jeans during the day and a light jacket at night -- but that period inches back a little bit more with each passing year, and it lasts a little bit longer.  In a few years, we are going to be trick-or-treating in tank tops.  My boys will go as cavemen every year, because it will be too hot to wear anything other than a loincloth.  It's depressing when good weather makes you feel so bad.

We had a nice holiday weekend, at least.  On Saturday, S and Lil' S1 went to the National Book Fair, which they thoroughly enjoyed, and I took Lil' S2 on a "hike" to Rock Creek with a friend and his five-year-old twins.  It's probably good to hang out with them once in while without Lil' S1 there, as he tends to just dominate the activities.  This way they can do more of the "little kid things" that they probably want to do, but don't do, because Lil' S1 has them doing something else.  For instance, after we went to the creek, we went to a playground, and everybody spent almost the entire time on the swings.  That likely wouldn't have happened with Lil' S1 there, because he gets bored on the swings, and he would have convinced everybody to do want he wants.

After we got back, we watched The Goonies, which was not my choice.  It's a nostalgia-inducing cult classic for people my age, but it's a pretty terrible movie, and it has some problematic parts for little kids.  For example, there's a relatively graphic scene in which Chunk is trapped in a freezer with the corpse of a murder victim, and the gag is that the body keeps falling on him.  And how do you even explain Sloth to a little kid?  Oh, he's just a severely disfigured, intellectually disabled guy who gets imprisoned and tortured by his family because he's different.  That's all.  Interestingly, however, that wasn't what Lil' S1 was bothered by -- he didn't like how the other kids treated Chunk.  At one point he asked me, "Are they mean to Chunk the entire movie?"  And I replied, "Yeah, actually, they kinda are."  But, he liked the movie, and I learned about Lupe Ontiveros, so overall it was a success, I guess.

The next day, Lil' S2 went to a friend's house and then S took him out to run some errands, so I switched things up and spent most the day alone with Lil' S1.  I promised S that I wouldn't just play video games with him the entire time, so we played a long game of Monopoly instead.  I like Monopoly, but it's so long, and it's not much fun with two players, especially when one of them doesn't yet understand how to evaluate the properties on the game correctly.  He gets excited when you land on his single property for $15, even if it means you skipped his corner with a bunch of houses and hotels.  But at least he gets to practice his arithmetic and think strategically and whatnot.  It probably is more intellectually stimulating then playing video games, and it's definitely better than watching iPad.  (Also, we did play the Nintendo Switch a bit, because a new game came -- Super Smash Bros.  It's a more ornate, more cartoonish Street Fighter II.  It's pretty fun.)

When it comes to Lil' S2's learning I've gotten pretty into the technique espoused in the book Range, which is basically that it's almost always better in the long-run for the student to suffer through a task or problem on their own, even if they do it "wrong" and get the wrong answer, than it is for them to be guided by a teacher to do things the "right way" and get the right answer.  There's way more value in exploration than there is in learning the "proper technique."  This so rings true to me based on my own experience.  I got really good at math in college by sitting in a quiet room by myself and staring at a bunch of seemingly incomprehensible symbols until they made sense to me.  And I inadvertently built the foundation for thinking this way at a younger age by not being tethered to the "right way" of doing things.  I had an absent computer science teacher in high school*, and I wonder if that actually helped me, because it forced me to do everything on my own.  So, I'm trying to take a hands-off approach with my kids.  S isn't as zealous about this idea as I am, but she seems to be mostly on board, so we shall see.

*He was in some sort of course to be an administrator so he frequently missed class and his substitute literally didn't know how to code.

Anyway, we capped of Labor Day weekend with a terrific day at this water park owned by the city of Gaithersburg, MD.  I had no idea this place even existed, but we went for the birthday party of our friends' kid, and it was so nice.  It wasn't crowded at all, and the water slides were actually pretty fun.  Lil' S1 is finally tall enough for thing like this, and he must have gone down those slides 15 times.  You could basically just go down and go right back up without waiting in line.  I went down a few times, but I'm mostly too old for that shit.  (Later in the day, I actually felt kinda seasick from it -- pathetic but true.)  Lil' S1 is pretty good in the water in general.  He still doggy paddles a lot, and he looks like he's struggling, but then he will submerge himself and swim underwater when he needs a big burst.  It can be nerve-wracking to watch, but it's somehow effective.

Lil' S2 is making progress too, but he still has a long way to go.  The thing about that kid, though, is that he's pretty much fearless, when it comes to things like that.  He jumps in the water and tries to swim, but he just can't do it yet.  He'll get the hang of it though.  Very few kids learn before five and most (like his brother) don't learn until six or seven.

Alright, I gotta cut this post off kinda abruptly.  The boys are at a friends' house, and I have to go pick them up.

Until next time...

[Lil' S1 took his book outside this morning to try to "sell it."  (I think he wanted S to buy him something online.)  But he didn't find any takers, so he just sat down and started reading it instead, and his brother decided to join him.]